Take a trip with me in the way back machine to Sam’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in season 1, the day after Adele’s funeral when Sookie sent him home without any pecan pie.

First his trailer starting falling apart. When he tried to fix it, all he got for his effort was a lot of frustration…

and pain because he didn’t have the right tools for the job.

That was followed by a fight with Tara.

At work he had to intervene before a brawl busted out between Lafayette and Royce.

Then he found out that while he didn’t get any pie, Sookie served Bill the whole enchilada.

Later that night, Sam had to deal with not one vampire, but three.

And it stayed that way as he went all Buffy on their asses.

And nearly got his own dick served to him for dinner by Liam.

When Sookie asked Sam to be her hero and do something to prevent the dumbass redneck trio from fire bombing the trashy vampire trio, he really didn’t give a fuck and told her so.

Notice anything odd about the screencaps from the living nightmare that was Sam’s day? Enlarge the images and compare Sam’s shirt at different times in the day.  As Sam gets angrier his plaid goes from soft black to sharp black. The blue recedes until during the fight, there’s not a trace of it left. After he calms down, it reappears, but he’s still POed, so there’s much less showing at the end of the day when he tells off Sookie than at the beginning of the day when he told off Tara.

Sam’s got himself a mood shirt. I hear they were all the rage with shifters for two weeks 1977.

Switching gears for two shakes of Sam’s tail, with the exception of Sookie and Hoyt, if someone is wearing blue in Bon Temps, they are not, not, not on the up and up. In the most innocent cases, they are trying to put their best foot forward; in the worst, they are conning a mark.

Don’t believe me?

Tara wore a blue vest when playing the role of a model Super Sav-A-Bunch employee but took it off  to give Big Red a taste of the real Tara Mae.

Bill wore blue to the Descendants of the Glorious Dead meeting.

Jason wore blue to show Amy off to the town, to show the town off to Amy, and to show off his pecs.

Eggs met Tara wearing little more than a blue guitar.

Daphne’s interview outfit was blue.

Steve wore blue at the beginning of the leadership conference.

Hugo wore it to con Isabel.

Then Hugo and Sookie donned blue to conn Newlins.

Jason and Andy wore blue to convince themselves and others that they were the true heroes who saved the town from the mad maenad.

Jason wore blue on his first day on the job at the pole-eece station.

And Eric deftly wielded a cyan sweater to bring down the royal family of Mississippi.

But the King of Blue is, or at least, before season 3, was Mr. Sam Merlotte.

How’s that for a smooth segue back to Sam and his wardrobe?

Seasons 1 when Sam was so invested in keeping his true nature hidden, scarcely a day passed that he didn’t have at least a smidge of blue in his shirt.

Day 1

Day 2 He wears a Merlotte’s T.

Day 3 Sam is a True Blood no show.

Day 4 He’s back in blue plaid.

Day 5 He mixes it up with stripes, but the color palate still includes blue.

He changes to black later the same day after he finds out that Dawn is dead. This starts another pattern for when Sam is coping with loss.

Day 6 A touch of blue has come back

It’s out in full force later that night on his date with Sookie. Everyone shows their best side during a first date, right?

Is it just me or is Sam’s mood shirt back? After Gran’s death, it doesn’t seem to read blue anymore. It just looks black…like his mourning shirt.

Except for when he’s doing his best to comfort Sookie…Then the shirt is blue again, even if it is more subdued.

Inside and outside the house in two different light settings it still appears blue with Sookie, so why was the lighting so different in the bedroom when Sam was talking to Bill “Sookie is Mine” Compton?

Day 7 Sam’s still in the same shirt. Now it reads true blue. Tara’s in blue, too, as the two of them do their best to put on a sociable face as Bon Temps comes calling to pay their respects.

That takes us to day 8, where we started–the day of Gran’s funeral, and the day before Sam’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, number 9.

So what’s up with the shifting colors in Sam’s shirt? Is this a shifter thing? Is he PMSing? It is that time of the month, and a full moon shift and an early morning run in his birthday suit…

seems to set Sam back on a even keel on day 10.

Day 11

Day 12 is the Merlotte’s T again.

Day 13 Sam breaks the pattern with basic black when he thinks he may have lost Tara for good, hence the flowers and the contrite apology.

After talking with Tara, he’s confident enough that it’s not over to change out of basic black and recycle the shirt from day 5. Doesn’t it look familiar? Sam wore this shirt the day he found out Dawn was dead. That’s when he changed into black in the middle of the day, so this conversation with Tara reverses that process–from black back to blue stripes.

Later that night, he changes for the third time and wears Bill’s clothes.

Day 14 Sam tries to put his best face forward in blue for Arlene’s party.

But his real feelings come through after getting the cold shoulder from Sookie all day. He’s worried he’s lost her for good, so it’s back in black for the party.

Day 15 After Sam saves Sookie from being attacked at Merlotte’s the night before, he wears a Merlotte’s T for sleuthing at Big Pattie’s Pie House.

Day 16 The night before Bill punched his lights out, and Sookie sent him home, so he turns up at Merlotte’s in dingy earth tones.

But later that night, the old Sam is back after he earns his way back into Sookie’s good graces.

After a two week intermission and a nine month television hiatus, Sam’s still in blue plaid in the first episode of season 2.

Day 32

Day 33 When Sam contemplates running from MA and losing his life in Bon Temps, he wears a faded brown T.

Day 34 He’s made his decision, and for the first time ever, red has crept into his wardrobe. Sam will stay, but he knows he will have to pay a price beyond money.

Day 35 Daphne disappeared from the party just when Sam thought he was about to get lucky. His disappointment is reflected the next day in his mostly solid brown shirt. Has he lost her interest for good?

Day 36 He’s in good with Daphne again, and he doesn’t have to hide who he is from her. Sam doesn’t need no stinking non-threatening, unassuming blue to hide behind now. Now he’s all badass black and gray…and red. Remember the red is symbolic of that sacrifice owed to Mary Ann that’s hanging over his head.

Daphne makes Sam practically forgets about Mary Ann and her demands. You can hardly discern the  red in his shirt at all after a few hours in the woods with her.

But when she turns him over to Mary Ann’s  minions, it predominates.

Sam’s second shirt of the night is another solid black one. Yep another break with his women du jour and another mourning outfit.

With the exception of  a short stint in Andy’s clothes, the black T sees Sam through discovering Daphne’s body, being arrested, and getting attacked by the  zombies at Merlotte’s the following night.

When Lisa and Coby give Sam a problem to focus on outside of his own, thankfully he puts away the mourning shirt and the plaid reappears.

But the blue won’t return until after he’s crushed Mary Ann’s black heart with his bare hand.

Take a good look at that blue plaid because it will be the last you see for a looong time. In season 3 it only appears in Sam’s dream. He gives it to Bill. The rest of s3 finds Sam almost exclusively in earth tones. Sam is no longer hiding who or what he is. He doesn’t have to put his best foot forward with the Mickens. He comes right out and tells them what he is and what happened to him. They’re family, and he wants them to know him. Blue would only get in the way of that.

He finally wears blue plaid when he tries to step into the role of older wiser brother the night after he catches Tommy breaking into his office.

He can’t keep up the facade long though. It’s not until he tries to comfort Tara after Franklin traumatize her that the blue comes out again.

On the final morning of season 3, Sam makes hoe cakes for Tara while wearing gray and black plaid boxers.

His shirt that day shares the same color palate.

When Sam confronts Tommy about stealing his safe, the colors in his shirt are more saturated, which makes the black look especially dark and blotchy–a near perfect wardrobe choice for shooting your brother.

Tommy obligingly wears red plaid. Come on Tommy, you’re practically asking for it.

Me thinks in 4.01, that shirt will be even more red.

So…all this is to make the point that True Blood is deliberately manipulating colors with lighting for symbolic purposes.

It also happens with Steve Newlin’s wardrobe, but in an even more subtle way. There has been much discussion on SVB about lavender marriages in True Blood, and with Steve’s infatuation of Jason, it seems that his marriage is another candidate for one.

Over and over again, when Steve stands near Sarah, his clothes seem to take on a lavender cast. Stripes that are bright white near Jason become lavender near Sarah. Stripes that are blue when he’s cheering on Jason, seem to go purple when he directs his attention to Sarah. The most obvious example of Sarah’s power to make Steve’s clothes change color is at the beginning of season 2.

On tv Steve appears to be wearing a blue tie, but when he’s with Sarah, it’s as lavender as lavender gets.

After looking at these subtleness until I’m cross eyed and wondering if I’m picking up something deliberate or accidental, I’ve finally found an example that, to my mind, lays the question to rest.

Look at the painting over the staircase at the palace. When you enlarge it, you can see a dark cloud hanging over the bucolic landscape.

When the house is shut down for the day and dark except for the natural light on the first floor, all that is visible is a bit of the yellow sky.

Here is is later that night. Now we’ve been shown unequivocally that artificial lighting at night is much brighter than the natural day light.

But the next day as Sookie and Tara creep downstairs in the  dark, Sookie and the painting are lit up with strong white light, much brighter than ever before, even thought the house is as dark as it has ever been. The impending dark cloud in the painting has nearly vanished and the detail is easily discernible in the enlarged image.

This scene is the bookend to the first staircase Sookie descended in season 3. Not coincidentally, she was wearing lavender then, too, and brought her own light, illuminating Eric’s dark basement as she descended. In both cases, she was attempting to rescue Bill and ended up interrupting a bondage scene.

The light Sookie brings when she attempts to save Bill, contrasts with the darkness he brought into her life season 1 the first time he entered Merlotte’s.

And Sookie lighting up the picture in the palace contrasts with Bill short circuiting Eric’s Sol Beer sign after killing Long Shadow.

Eric didn’t need Sookie to get his sign back in working order, but here’s how it should look…and with the long wait for season 4, I’m feeling about like Sookie is in this picture…

And wishing that in seven months Eric will come back and take me down to the basement.